The Titfield Thunderbolt is a 1953 British comedy film directed by Charles Crichton and starring Stanley Holloway, Naunton Wayne, George Relph and John Gregson.

On securing financial backing from Walter Valentine, a wealthy man with a fondness for daily drinking, the men learn that the Ministry of Transport will allow them a month's trial period, after which they must pass an inspection to make the Order permanent.

Aided by Harry Hawkins, a steam roller operator who hates the railway, Crump and Pearce attempt to block the line on its first run, but the train forces its way through.

After Chesterford refuses to accept a merger offer from them, Crump and Pearce hire Hawkins to help them derail the steam locomotive and passenger coach lent to the villagers by British Railways, the night before the line's inspection.

Blakeworth, the town clerk of Mallingford, is mistakenly arrested despite trying to stop the attempt, and the villagers become disheartened that their line will now close without any rolling stock and working steam locomotive.

Distracted from his driving, Pearce crashes the bus into the police van transporting Valentine and Taylor, and when Crump lets slip that they have been involved in sabotaging the line they are promptly arrested.

Originally they were provided only to operate the locomotives employed in the film on location but, when Charles Crichton talked to them and realised they "looked and sounded the part", they were given speaking roles and duly credited.

When interviewed for an article in Railway World, T. E. B. Clarke revealed that he based Mr. Valentine on an elderly gentleman that he remembered in the hotel bar while on a holiday.

In the scene in which the Thunderbolt is "rear-ended" by the uncoupled train, the locomotive's tender sustained some actual damage, which remains visible beneath the buffer beam to this day.

The scene where Thunderbolt is removed at night from its museum was filmed in the (now demolished) Imperial Institute building near the Royal Albert Hall in London, but shots were created using a studio-built model for this.

[1] The poster was commissioned by Ealing Studios from the artist Edward Bawden and features the final episode in which the Bishop of Wilchester acts as fireman on the purloined Victorian locomotive.

[11] Ealing Studios head Sir Michael Balcon expressed dissatisfaction with the result of the film, believing that it didn't quite match up to what had been written in the script.

"[16] George Perry, in his history of the studios, compared it to Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico as sharing "the theme of the small group pitted against and universally triumphing over the superior odds of a more powerful opponent."